


Prioritization

by cauldronofdoom



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, M/M, break up fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-28
Updated: 2012-08-28
Packaged: 2017-11-13 02:02:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/498225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cauldronofdoom/pseuds/cauldronofdoom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." ~Spock</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prioritization

**Author's Note:**

> Partially inspired by 'Delete' by ashinan. Just for the tone of the relationship, but you should still know. You should also read it if you haven't. It's awesome.

“Where are they all coming from? This is ridiculous. JARVIS, use those new sensors I put in.” There were giant mechanical frogs in Central Park, terrorizing all the people who had decided to come out for a picnic on this lovely Saturday. 

In other words, the battleground was full of screaming, traumatized civilians.

‘Sir, may I remind you of the problem with the…’

“No, you may not. There are people down there, that’s more important than them taking a ridiculous amount of power so far. Do it, JARVIS!” Tony breathed a sigh of relief as the scan came up, locating the creatures that seemed to be controlling the others within a minute.

“Got it, guys!” He said over the comm, “Hawkeye, that group that are acting faulty are the controllers! It’s a defense, them looking not as dangerous.”

*I see them, Iron Man.* Clint replied, two arrows already arcing towards the limping ones. There were two more with weird energy signatures, but they were too far from the others and Tony didn’t want to distract the archer with too many specific targets.

*Took you long enough.* Came Cap’s voice, still sounding sullen and resentful from before.

*Lover’s quarrels off the communicators.* Natasha insisted, backed up by Thor’s assent. *Keep that for the tower.*

Tony was just about to reply to that when something hit him in the back and the world went dark.  
*  
“You missed the first half of the movie.” Steve said, crossing his arms over his chest. Tony ran his hand through his hair, already knowing this was going to be bad.

“I know, and I’m sorry. I was working with a new sensor array, and lost track of time. I need something that can…” The blonde cut him off with a sweeping motion, and Tony fell silent. At this point, there was no reason to keep trying to explain. Steve wasn’t really listening.

“Tony, you always say you’re sorry, but I don’t really believe you anymore. If you actually were, you wouldn’t keep doing this! You love to putter around in your shop, but what about everything else? This was a team thing, Tony! You can’t keep blowing everyone off and expecting everything to be okay. You can’t keep blowing me off!”

That was the crux of it, wasn’t it? Oh, Tony could say all he liked that some idiot blowing up three labs last night at SI had been important, and that he had to talk to investors at parties, not just hang out with Steve, and that he’d much rather have been around for their usual Tuesday date than in Japan, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that Steve wanted, needed, more, and Tony couldn’t give it to him. 

He had nothing to say, and Steve had stormed off to his own room and locked his door. That was a no-Tony zone, always had been. They shared Tony’s bed when they did, which was less and less lately. If Tony wasn’t around for at least ten minutes of cuddling before Steve’s 11PM arbitrary bedtime, the soldier just kissed him goodnight and retreated to his own room. Tony was getting better about not staying up late, but now he was behind on SI’s new defence contract (a better radar system) and he still hadn’t fixed that problem with EMPs and he really did need that new sensor for the suit…  
*  
“Tony, when was the last time you shaved?” He knew he looked rather scruffy, but he didn’t deserve that look of censure from Steve. He’d showered, just hadn’t had time to do much else. Supervillains didn’t wait for anyone’s bathroom routine, after all. 

It quickly devolved into a screaming match that had earned them a stern lecture from Clint about not upsetting Bruce so much. Tony felt awful, but still defensive. It hadn’t been a good mixture, and he hadn’t spoken to Steve for two days after.

His goatee was back to impeccable, though.  
*  
“Two hours, Tony. I was waiting for you for two hours. Oh, sure, you sent a text fourty minutes in and convinced Thor to join me, but… Two hours, Tony! You never even showed!” Steve was upset, and deservedly! Tony was furious too, though not at his boyfriend. People he hadn’t been allowed to piss off due to a multi-billion dollar deal had used the conference as a way to trap him in the room and force him to answer all their inane and positively stupid little questions about the project. He’d had to pretend to need the washroom to get a chance to text Steve and Thor. He hadn’t wanted to completely call off the date, still hoping to make some part of it, but it had taken Pepper (who was a very busy person and in no way at fault, he reminded himself) three hours to realize he was still there and storm the conference. 

He explained this to Steve, as best he could. And Steve understood, as best he could. That didn’t mean both weren’t sad, and mad, and itching for a fight. They’d gone downstairs to spar, since that was at least something they could do to exorcise aggression together, but Clint and Natasha had separated them after Tony missed a block and got knocked out of the ring.

They slept in their own rooms, even though Tony had been sure to pick up all his dirty laundry and have housekeeping change the sheets in honour of date night.   
*  
Tony’s eyes were still shut, but he had been awake for almost a half hour now. He didn’t know what had happened, but his last memory was of fighting with Steve. Again. On a mission. That never happened, and Tony was deeply troubled by the fact that it now had. It was no wonder he was turning the last few months over in his mind again and again. He knew he was at fault as much as Steve for this. The man was occasionally demanding and needy, but Tony knew (oh, did he ever know) what it was like to love someone too busy for you to know if it was mutual. He was turning into his father, as much as he hated that thought. His father and his obsessions had truly hurt both Tony and his mother. 

It was just as unfair that Tony was doing that to Steve as it was that Steve was demanding so much more than Tony was able to give.   
*  
It was Clint that finally rousted Steve from his spot at Tony’s side, clutching his hand and fretting. Tony was sure it wouldn’t have worked if Natasha hadn’t been backing the archer up. Both were formidable, but together they were unstoppable.

They were also super-spies. He’d mostly only fooled Steve because of how distraught the man was, but nothing slipped past either of them. It wasn’t a surprise when Clint spoke, knowing Tony wasn’t still asleep. “JARVIS was able to give me a description of the other controller-frogs, but it took a few minutes to sort out and find them. He doesn’t really… understand how we see things, so his descriptions weren’t as helpful as yours. Plus they’d moved and he couldn’t ‘see’ anymore. You were hit with an EMP, and both Thor and Hulk were too busy to play catch. Steve doesn’t know yet, but the reason your falling failsafes didn’t work was because your new sensors had sucked too much juice out of your reactor at one time.” He was silent for a moment. “Casualties were sixteen. Thirteen over, mostly minor stuff like broken bones and cuts. Three under. One got trampled, one got hit with shrapnel and died of blood loss, and one was a heart attack from all the excitement. SHIELD’s working on who sent the frogs.”

Tony swallowed. With the park being as full as it was, thirteen injured and three dead was much lower than it could have been.

It was still sixteen over what it should have been. What was the point in being a superhero if you couldn’t even protect people?

Clint didn’t offer any platitudes. Thor and Tony, the fliers, had been first on the scene. Tony could have gotten there faster, but after his fight with Steve the night before and the cold stares at breakfast, everyone knew he was in a mental place where going alone against the plot-of-the-day was dangerous. He’d waited for Thor without needed to be told, and no one had commented. Tony should have been there, but Clint wouldn’t say that. Clint knew. He should have never shut down the helicarrier’s systems, but it had happened. He carried those agents with him, same as he knew Tony would be adding three more names to his own ledger.   
*  
Steve was being cuddly and overprotective, same as he always was when one of them had been in medical. It was worse when it was Tony, of course. Tony knew that Steve loved him, just as he knew how much he loved Steve. Tony tolerated the mother-henning through his first meal, but had put his foot down when Steve had tried to convince him to ‘take a nap, or just come cuddle with me on the couch. You’re on painkillers, Tony, and you need to heal’. 

“JARVIS will not, nor has he ever, let me mess up the suit due to human error. That’s what he’s there for, to be my control. Pain pills won’t stop that, and the suit has to be functional again ASAP. This is a technological arms race, Cap. The last iteration wouldn’t have been as useful against those frogs, and I can’t risk putting this off. We don’t know who made them, and we have no reason to expect the threat is gone just because we destroyed a few.”

Steve had no choice but to let him go to his lab, alone, and work for the rest of the afternoon. Tony was glad Steve hadn’t pushed right then. Some things needed to be done in private.  
*  
Steve had been annoyed when Tony had refused to come up for dinner, but he’d tried to squash that. Tony deserved better than his petulance. He’d had time to think while Tony’d been in medical (two days before he’d woken, thanks to the drugs they had him on) and had come to the conclusion that he wasn’t doing as well at handling Tony’s other duties as he should be. 

Still, wouldn’t that EMP shield he’d been working on have been a better use of his time than the latest Starkphone or whatever it was that he’d finished two days before? Then he wouldn’t have been knocked out of the sky. He would have been safe.

He brought Tony down a plate, ignoring the strangely sympathetic looks Clint and Natasha had been giving him when he made it up. His stomach was in knots even without them. 

Tony had been unusually quiet when he’d opened the door, just watching Steve as opposed to calling out a greeting or coming over. Steve paced forward deliberately, setting the plate down right in front of Tony. The genius had stared at it for a moment, then looked back up to Steve. “Thank you.” There was something like anguish hidden in the beautiful brown depths, and it caused goosebumps to rise on his arms.

“Tony, I…” He started, but Tony just held up a hand for silence. Steve closed his mouth, willing to let Tony say what he was thinking in peace.

“’There are no parties, there are no papers that need to be signed, there is nothing but the next mission.’” He said, his inflection making it obvious he was quoting something. His lips quirked up in a small, weak parody of humour, but the softness didn’t reach any further than that. “I missed dinner on purpose. I wanted to talk to you without the others around. I knew you’d bring me food.” He gestured to a spare stool off to the side. Steve collapsed onto it, very aware that he didn’t want to listen to what Tony had to say, but knowing he owed it to the other man to respect his desire to say it. 

“It was something I said to Pepper.” Tony said, turning slightly to play with his holographs just a bit. “After Gulmira. It was Iron Man’s first real mission, despite it already being the Mark III suit.” Steve nodded, even though Tony wasn’t looking at him. “The rest of it was just as profound, which is why I’m recycling the speech for you, even though it’ll be paraphrased slightly. ‘I’m not crazy, I just know, for once in my life, exactly what I’m supposed to be doing. And I know, in my heart, that it’s right.’”

Tony fell silent for a moment. Steve wanted to break the silence, wanted to grab Tony and fill it with happier noises, but knew he couldn’t. “The sensor array that let me trace their communications is new. This was the first field test. It takes up power faster than anything but the heat ray. JARVIS was looking for ways to fix that, and found a few. The most desirable would have involved taking the helmet completely apart and re-wiring, but one of the quick and dirty ones wouldn’t have taken more than a half hour or so. If I’d skipped the movie, stayed up just a little bit after our fight, or taken breakfast downstairs with me and missed our little pissing match in the morning, I wouldn’t have fallen like that.”

Steve felt sick, considering that. He knew Tony was working of the suit, but he’d insisted on movie night anyway. Tony had gotten hurt, and it didn’t matter that he had the best of intentions. 

Tony wasn’t done yet. “Improved EMP shielding got pushed back for date night, which got put off because a junior engineer blew up an entire floor, putting us weeks behind schedule at SI. If things had happened like I was hoping, I would have been at the fight sooner, capable of detecting the leaders the moment I got to the battle, and impervious to that attack that took me out.” He was drumming his fingers on the arc reactor, and nervous habit that made Steve unhappy at the best of times. No one should have to constantly check that their heart was still in place. 

Tony shifted two pictures over from in front of him to in front of Steve. He blinked. They were the obituary pictures of two of the people who had died in Central Park. “If I hadn’t been taken out, medical personnel could have gotten to Mr. Sanchez in time to staunch his bleeding. It was horrible, but it was still only a calf wound. And Ms. Ryder wouldn’t have been in danger, because Clint could have taken out the control bots before that leaper escaped our perimeter to chase down the civilians.”

Steve thought he knew where this was going, but he wanted desperately to be wrong. Tony saw the understanding in his eyes, and his own softened. “Iron Man is responsibility, and compassion, and respect for all life. He’s about lessons learned, and lessons still being taught. He’s about respect, both for me, for him, and for everyone else. He’s about trust, and finally proving myself worthy of it.” Tony drew a shuddering breath, and Steve knew they’d come to the part of the conversation he’d hate. “He’s too important to be put on hold for Tony.” 

Steve’s hands were clenched in his lap, and he knew the only reason he wasn’t bleeding was because of how short he kept his nails. Tony made a move to reach for him, but let his hand fall to the table between them. He took a deep breath, his heart aching. He could tell just from looking that Tony felt just as awful. 

He wasn’t done, though. “SI is almost as important.” Steve would have objected (how could a company be more important than a person?) but Tony waved him to silence again. “SI employs millions worldwide. We’re a leader in green energy, our intellicrops help combat hunger, and our technology is changing the world and enabling collaboration and cooperation around the globe. Beyond that, it funds both the Avengers in general and Iron Man specifically.” He gave a wry grin. “The government quit breathing down my neck about the suit when I broke down the cost of both it and War Machine for them. Me ‘wasting my time’ with more user-friendly and damage resistant cell phones is part of that. Same with going to parties and schmoozing. How do you think I’m financing the rebuilding charities?”

Steve didn’t answer. He wasn’t really expected to.

“The team’s important, too. Hanging out in our downtime helps us form bonds that aid us in the field, I know that. But Steve, there’s only ever 168 hours in a week. 40 are guaranteed to SI just for R&D work. Then there’s my consulting for Fury, which is usually good for at least 20 hours of trying to keep his junior agents alive and his mechanical assets unhackable and mobile. Between 40 and 50 hours for sleeping. Add Avengers PR duties, SI PR duties, physical training, team meetings and training, and our tech needs, like Iron Man, and I simply do not have time to have a relationship. Not a real one.”

That was it, what all of this had been boiling down to. Steve offered the only argument he could come up with weakly, knowing it wasn’t enough. “I love you.” He could feel tears forming in his eyes, but he did his best not to let them fall.

Tony got up and walked around to him, pulling him into his chest. Steve ignored the grease he was likely getting all over his face and snuggled into Tony, wrapping his arms around him. “I know.” Tony replied, voice suspiciously thick. “I know, I know. I love you too. This has nothing to do with either of us not loving the other. I think it’d probably be easier if we didn’t. I…” His voice hitched, and Steve was sure he was crying. “I’ll always love you, but this is destroying us, trying to be together. We just fight all the time, and then both of us are miserable.”

Steve knew he was right, he knew it, but that didn’t mean he wanted to accept it. “I’ll always love you, too, Tony. You’re my everything.”

That got him a small laugh. “I wish that could have really been true, that I could have given you all you deserve.” There was a hand stroking through his hair and a growing damp patch where his face was sitting. 

They fell silent, holding each other and pretending they weren’t sobbing.  
*  
“This doesn’t mean I’ll stop cuddling you on movie nights.” Steve warned Tony as he prepared to leave the workshop, hours later.

“Of course not.” Tony replied with a grin. And if his smile was just a little shaky, well, Steve wasn’t going to call him on it. “It doesn’t mean I’m going to stop ruffling your hair in the kitchen either, if you’re going to claim cuddling rights.” He rubbed a hand through his own hair then, looking exhausted. “Eventually we might even work our comfort level up sex again, even though we can’t be together together. Nat and Clint can do it, after all, so it’s not impossible.”

Steve laughed weakly, even though it had been both a very weak joke and not a joke. He wasn’t sure if ‘friends with benefits’ would be any better than together, to be honest. “It’s always about sex with you, isn’t it?” He teased back, just to see Tony’s smile brighten to something real.

He hesitated at the doorway, turning back to face his now-ex lover. “Can I… Can I have a kiss? One last one?” Tony hesitated too, but nodded, meeting him in the middle of the room.

It was as wonderful as their kisses always were, sweet and soft and so full of love. He lingered, exploring Tony’s lips and mouth, committing his taste to memory. It trailed off slowly, but eventually Steve pulled away. “I love you.” He said, not able to help it.

“I love you, too.” Tony replied, pulling back and heading to his workstation.

Steve nodded once, crisply, then turned on his heel and left.

He didn’t look back.

**Author's Note:**

> Why do I feel the need to angst up all the happy tropes, like Steve dragging Tony from his workshop for cuddle-time or marathon sex? Why?


End file.
